The head of the European Stability Mechanism Klaus Regling expressed his confidence that Greece will be able to return to capital markets before the end of the current program in 2018, assuming that Athens will implement the agreed reforms.

He also suggested that the ESM may buy some of the IMF loans provided to Greece.

“The lending rates of the ESM are only about a third of those of the IMF, and our loans for Greece have very long maturities – 32.5 years on average. Moreover, there are long grace periods in which Greece will not service any debt to the ESM at all,” Regling said in a speech.

“This makes the ESM better equipped to deal with the crisis in Europe than the IMF, particularly on the debt side, and this is what we have been debating in the past few months,” added.